On the use of belladonna in scarlatina / [J. Warburton Begbie].

  • James Warburton Begbie
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the use of belladonna in scarlatina / [J. Warburton Begbie]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Halinemann/ we extract his own account of the manner in which his discovery was made. “ The mother of a large family, at the commencement of July, 1799,* when the scarlet fever was most prevalent and fatal, had got a new counterpane made up by a sempstress, who (without the knowledge of the former) had in her small chamber a boy just recovering of scarlet fever. The first-mentioned woman on receiving it examined it, and smelt it, in order to ascertain whether it might not have a bad smell that would make it necessary to hang it in the open air; but as she could detect nothing of the sort, she laid it beside her on the pillow of the sofa, on which some hours later she lay down for her afternoon’s nap. She had unconsciously, in this way only (for the family had no other near or remote connection with scarlatina patients), imbibed this miasm. A week subsequently she suddenly fell ill of a bad quinsy, with the characteristic shooting pains in the throat, which could only be subdued after four days of threatening symptoms. Several days there- after her daughter, ten years of age, infected most probably by the morbific exhalations of the mother, or by the emanations from the counterpane, was attacked in the evening by severe pressive pain in the abdomen, with biting itching on the body and head, and rigor over the head and arms, and with paralytic stiffness of the joints. ' She slept very restlessly during the night, with frightful dreams, and perspiration all over the body excepting the head. I found her in the morning with pressive headache, dimness of vision, slimy tongue, some ptyalism, the submaxillary glands hard, swollen, painful to the touch, shooting pains in the throat on swallowing and at other times. She had not the slightest thirst, her pulse was quick and small, breathing hurried and anxious; though she was very pale she felt hot to the touch, yet com- plained of hoiTipilation over the face and hairy scalp; she sat leaning somewhat forwards, in order to avoid the shooting in the abdomen, which she felt most acutely when stretching or bending back the body; she complained of a paralytic stiffness of the limbs with an air of the most dejected pusillanimity and shunned all conversation. ‘ She felt,’ she said, ‘ as if she could only speak in a whisper.’ Her look was dull and yet staring, the eyelids inordinately wide open, the face pale, features sunk. “ Now I knew only too well that the ordinary favourite remedies, as in many other cases, so also in scarlatina, in the most favorable cases leave eveiything unchanged; and, therefore, I resolved in this case of scarlet fever just in the act of breaking out, not to act as usual in refer- ence to individual symptoms, but if possible (in accordance with my new * The 14th of May, 1796, was, as Dr. Watson happily terms it, “the birthday of vaccination;” it is not unlikely that during the period from May, 1796, to July, 1799, the mind of Hahnemann had been strongly directed to the subject of the prevention of contagions diseases.
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